Boards›General Discussion

Riot facilitating behavior that undermines their ranked systems

MjolnirOdenson·4/5/2019, 6:02:25 PM·5 votes·2,054 views

I believe ranked smurfing undermines the system and I find that Riot facilitating this is even more unethical.

It's like a highschool basketball tournament where you randomly throw an NBA player in for the lolz. Yes it would bring in viewers that makes you money (twitch), yes it's fun for the NBA player (masters/Challenger tier player), but it's not fun for the people in that tournament that actually CARE about that game or tournament (promos/climb).

How is it ethical or OK for riot to subsidize the activity. They are trading the credibility of their ranked system for profit.

Cav: 1-giving streamers unranked unlocked accounts is endorsement. 2-100 games worth of climb before the elo hits D1 or masters is a problem. That's 100 games where 9 other players had their elo manipulated. Multiply this by the number of people who have these accounts and you have alot of disruption 3-no riot cannot stop people from making here accounts. The endorsement is the unethical part. 4-yes I consider my (plat) elo low elo

6 Comments

FrozenFrostFyre4/5/2019, 6:09:06 PM4 votes

Smurfing is explained by players wanted to find out if they can consistently get back into a certain elo or if they got there by luck. Usually extreme cases the system makes them skip ranks to get them out of lower elo as fast as possible. Maybe I didn't play as many games as you have, but in all my games through plat to diamond I don't think I encountered more than a single person that I would consider high diamond or above. Probably about 1 in 200 games.

Kalikain4/5/2019, 6:40:17 PM4 votes

So is no one allowed to make a new account and play ranked? You get one account for ranked and gg?

Void Kaiju4/5/2019, 7:17:30 PM3 votes

More accurate comparison: Being upset about smurfs is like being a highschool basketball player going into a massive nationwide tournament and then being upset when they encounter people there who are better than them.

notFREEfood4/5/2019, 7:57:04 PM2 votes

Playing on multiple accounts can be perfectly ethical. Lets say you want to maintain a onetrick account -nothing wrong with that.

What wouldn't be ethical would be intentionally manipulating your mmr to play with lower skill players.

But really, the smurf problem is vastly overstated. Losing one game in 100 to a smurf ain't gonna do jack shit to your mmr.

Cs Lh Oa Nc Eo4/5/2019, 11:02:33 PM1 votes

because no one who works for riot is really that great at the game and they care more about the feelings of their players (because it yields them more money) than they do about actual gameplay.